335 - How can I tell if a licensed IP is in my design?
Lattice provides free "no-risk" evaluations for some of its IP products. These IP evaluation packages can be downloaded free from Lattice website without licensing. here are a few ways you can tell whether a licensed IP is in a design/project:
- Bitstream generation: Go to Project > Active Strategy > Translate Design in Diamond, and set the Hardware Evaluation option to Disable. In this way only the design with a licensed IP can generate a bitstream. A design with non-licensed IP will not generate a bitstream, instead it will error out.
- MAP report: For the same design, the resource utilization for licensed IP is less than the one without license. The reason is that there is a hard timer for the non-licensed IP which stops the function of the IP after a few hours.
- Timing simulation: You cannot do timing simulation with a non-licensed IP. The timing simulation .vho/.vo files will not be generated for the design with non-licensed IP. For a design with a licensed IP, you can perform timing simulation.
- Hardware validation: If the IP is not licensed, the generated bit stream will NOT be working after a few hours as mentioned above. If the bit stream still works 24 hours after power on, that means the IP is a licensed version.